FT Mighty Mini Arrow with Larger Center Pod

The purpose of this article is to introduce my design changes which I made to FT Mighty Mini Arrow in order to increase the inner storage that allows keeping bigger battery, flight controller and my FPV gear. Center pod of the original plan only allows using 2S battery because of its limited size. I have built many Flite Test plans and the last one FT Spear gave me an inspiration to widen the center pod of the mini Arrow. The original plan is also modified so that it can be built by using 3 mm thick foam board which provides almost %30 weight gain.

I used SketchUp to build new center pod and it includes 5 main components:

1-     Center Cover

2-     Motor Pod

3-     Center Spar and Strong Bar

4-     Center Formers:

5-     Nose Cover

I also widen the small door in the wing parts, since my transmitter does not fit into the original one.  I also preferred to use 9 gr servo motors and 8 inch prop with more powerful motor. It flies great and very fast when it is on manual mode. It flies very stable and much more controllable when flight stabilization mode is on.  I really like this FT plane because of its mini size and its satisfactory flying performance.

After CAD process, I used Gimp photo editor in order to transfer my drawings to the PDF plans.

These are some pictures from by building:

CONCLUSIONS

To sum up, I tried to explain my design changes which I made to FT Mini Arrow to widen the center pod.

My first attemp was to increase the center area without drawing any plan, This results in some diffuculties during the assembly of different parts. Drawing plan is the most important step of the design changes. I strongly advice to draw a plan before taking action.

After the modification,i had larger pod to fit my electronics. But, it would be perfect if i widen the center pod a little more.  

FT MIGHTY ARROW WITH LARGER CENTER POD SPECS

Weight without battery : 350 gr

Wing Span:  819 mm (32.24 inches)

FT MIGHTY MINI ARROW WITH LARGER CENTER POD PLANS

FT Mighty Mini Arrow with larger center pod (FULL PLAN)